Chinese AI Model GLM 5.2 Beating Frontier Models | Meta Glasses, Polymarket Scandal, and More AI Talent War

Summary

More or Less Podcast — Episode Summary

Episode: Chinese AI Model GLM 5.2 Beating Frontier Models | Meta Glasses, Polymarket Scandal, and More AI Talent War
Hosts: Dave Morin, Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, Sam Lessin
Date: June 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This week, the More or Less crew takes a whirlwind tour of the latest in tech, touching on open-source AI breakthroughs from China, the state of wearable tech with the latest Meta Glasses, prediction markets (including the Polymarket influencer controversy), the ongoing AI talent wars, and the evolving landscape of IPOs and public tech investing. The episode is packed with candid, often humorous debates among longtime friends and industry insiders, offering both insider takes and broad context for tech watchers.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Meta Glasses & The State of Wearable Tech

Timestamps: 05:01–14:20

• Meta Glasses Launch: Discussion on Meta’s new smart glasses, their shift from Ray-Ban branding to a self-branded line, and the competitive landscape with Snap’s Spectacles.
  • "They’re cool. I like them." (Dave Morin, 03:29)
  • Debate on whether this is the “watershed” moment for smart glasses, with Brit arguing it's significant for female users:
    • "Finally, this is the watershed moment of women buying smart glasses. Mark my words. Saying it now." (Brit Morin, 08:38)
  • The group reflects on personal experience, practical use cases, and shortcomings—especially camera quality and integration into daily life.
  • Hilarious anecdotes about using smart glasses in forbidden-photo venues:
    • "Who puts on the meta glasses right away? In the Sistine Chapel, no photos? Dave." (Brit Morin, 09:59)
  • Sam's Take: Despite owning many pairs, it's still not part of his daily rotation:
    • "My hours of use per pair is quite low." (Sam Lessin, 09:15)
  • Conversation shifts to use cases for AI-powered glasses, concerns around privacy, and future potential with real-time feedback and learning.

Notable Quotes

• “Meta is launching like a poly market competitor. We should talk about that, too.” (Brit Morin, 04:11)
• "There's only two things you can't manufacture in one factory. One is the most high-end chips in the world, and the other is sunglasses." (Sam Lessin, 05:32)

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2. Prediction Markets & the Polymarket Scandal

Timestamps: 14:20–22:47

• Meta’s (Rumored) Prediction Market: Skepticism about viability if limited to virtual currency; consensus is that it only matters if real money is involved.
  • “It has to be real money. It’s not a thing if it’s not real money.” (Sam Lessin, 04:27, repeated sentiment)
• Addictiveness & Impact: Debate on the potential harm, especially for young adults, and whether these markets help or hurt.
  • “They are very addicted to sports gambling.” (Dave Morin, 14:53)
  • Sam jokes he'd rather his son get addicted to prediction markets than trading cards:
    • "Trading cards are infinitely dumber, right, than prediction markets. I would rather our son be addicted to prediction markets than to stupid unboxing trading cards." (Sam Lessin, 00:27/18:34)
• Gender & Engagement: Brit predicts prediction markets could take off with women if tied to pop culture (The Bachelor, Love Island) and built into Instagram.
  • “The women are going to get really into it.” (Brit Morin, 20:17)
• Polymarket’s Influencer Scandal: Jess criticizes Polymarket’s alleged use of influencers to make fake trades and earnings, viewing it as immature and damaging to credibility.
  • “Polymarket has been directing influencers to make fake videos about fake trades and reporting fake earnings... If you're in a business like this that is so potentially interesting yet disruptive...just don't do stuff like that.” (Jessica Lessin, 21:08)

Notable Quotes

• "Fake currency is dumb." (Sam Lessin, 22:45)
• “It’s just doing quite a bit of damage to kids in their 20s.” (Dave Morin, 14:53)
• "Women are only, like, less than a quarter of Kalshee and Polymarket right now...It hasn't struck with most of the women I know." (Brit Morin, 19:42)

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3. The Ongoing AI Talent Wars

Timestamps: 22:47–27:32

• Poaching and Market Signals: The crew assesses why the markets “care” about talent moves (Anthropic raiding Google, etc.), when impact is more ambiguous.
  • “Everyone is, like, deeply insecure about the future of all of these companies that they're hanging so much on these signals.” (Jessica Lessin, 23:06)
  • Sam describes the simplistic market mentality: it’s constantly modeled as “infinity or zero” because the true path is so unpredictable.
    • “Everyone’s model looks like this: infinity or zero, and probability of infinity.” (Sam Lessin, 24:16)
• Open Source Models Threaten Frontier Labs: Dave describes running the new Chinese GLM 5.2 model on top-end Nvidia hardware — finding it rivals or beats “frontier” closed models for his coding tasks at a fraction of the cost.
  • “I was testing it, doing the exact same coding tasks that I’m doing with Frontier models...as good or better.” (Dave Morin, 26:34)
  • The potential for open models to disrupt the economic basis for large private AI labs is noted.

Notable Quotes

• “GLM 5.2 is...a new open source open weights model...out of the box it's doing 150 tokens per second, which is like 10 times what you get out of Frontier models.” (Dave Morin, 26:34)
• “What does that mean for all of these enormous positions that are out there in these Frontier labs? I think it's kind of shaky.” (Dave Morin, 27:49)

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4. AI Use, App Launches, and Token Spend

Timestamps: 27:32–34:49

• Token Spend & Loops: Sam and the group unpack how much they're spending on AI compute, the dangers of runaway token bills, and users’ inability to estimate costs on recurring jobs.
  • “I’m usually able to figure out how to spend the maximum amount of money. And I’ve tried and I’m just like, I can’t do it.” (Sam Lessin, 29:45)
• New 'The Information' App: Jess plugs newly launched features: a video tab with “shorts” as default, improved chatbot, and the question of integrating ads and personalized recommendations.
  • “Video. So we brought TI TV to mobile where it has always belonged...And our Deep Research chatbot is also slightly redesigned.” (Jessica Lessin, 31:25)
  • Sam lobbies for even more UI changes and jokes about ad placement.
• Discussion on using “agents” to review meetings, rate content, and more.

Notable Quotes

• "I want the clips...the shorts are good." (Sam Lessin, 33:44)
• "Never give users choice. You have to tell them what to do." (Sam Lessin, 36:02)

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5. IPOs, Public Listings, and the Democratization of Tech Investing

Timestamps: 36:13–43:40

• Historic IPOs vs. Today's Late Listings: Dave shares a tweet comparing Dell’s early IPO to late-stage AI company valuations, arguing for earlier public offerings to let average investors participate.
  • “Bring back earlier public listings so that every person can bet on tech too, right?” (Dave Morin, 37:08)
• Regulation and Prediction Markets Parallel: Sam pushes Dave on whether this is really different from wanting prediction markets, given both are about lowering barriers to high-risk participation.
  • "It's a really hard one...I don't think you can simultaneously be against the prediction markets and pro earlier companies going public with lighter standards." (Sam Lessin, 38:39)
• The Luck of Private Wealth Accumulation: Sam observes that some people at Facebook, Anthropic, etc. became extremely wealthy only because they couldn't sell until their equity skyrocketed — a phenomenon that wouldn't occur in liquid public markets.
  • “There’s all these random people that are now going to be worth hundreds of millions by accident. Right?” (Sam Lessin, 42:46)

Notable Quotes

• “I think Sarbanes Oxley is like so stupid and like bad for everyone.” (Sam Lessin, 38:15)
• “It's just a shame, like the rich got richer.” (Dave Morin, 40:52)
• "Whether these things are public or private or you're locked up or not...there are trade offs to the whole thing." (Sam Lessin, 43:32)

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6. Cannes Lions, Tech Messaging & Boondoggles

Timestamps: 43:40–48:47

• Cannes Lions Festival: Debate over its current relevance, role, and tech companies’ presence. Discussion of the real draw (networking, parties) vs. the substance (advertising creativity/awards).
  • “It's an excuse for a boondoggle.” (Dave Morin, 44:50)
  • Jess argues boondoggles like Davos can actually be very productive:
    • “A boondoggle done well. It is good to hang out in person and get things done.” (Jessica Lessin, 46:19)
• AI Messaging: Tech companies at Cannes positioning themselves as pro-creativity, anti-regulation; Meta’s new slogan, “The future is for everybody.”
  • “Their whole thing was like, you know, you can still be creative with AI, it doesn’t kill creativity.” (Jessica Lessin, 46:24)
  • "Meta...the future is for everybody, which I think is really weird." (Jessica Lessin, 47:06)
• Sam quips about registering domains like “aiisevil.com.”

Notable Quotes

• “AIIsEvil.com is for sale for $100,000.” (Sam Lessin, 47:32)

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Memorable Moments & Humor

• Trading Cards vs. Prediction Markets
  • "To me, trading cards are infinitely dumber, right. Than prediction markets. I would rather our son be addicted to prediction markets..." (Sam Lessin, 18:34)
• Insider Banter About Niche Fame
  • "It's like, it turns out no one knows who we are except for the six routes we travel." (Sam Lessin, 01:48)
• Sam’s Reluctance to Use Smart Glasses Despite Ownership
  • "Despite owning several pairs and having them in my house, I didn't bring them. So, like, there's some gap still to cross there..." (Sam Lessin, 11:38)
• Playful Jabs About Company Scale
  • “Snap is now about two box dot nets. That's how important and big a company it is, right?” (Sam Lessin, 07:12)

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Flow & Tone

The episode is true to the “debate among friends” spirit, mixing sharp insider analysis with irreverent teasing and self-deprecating humor. The panel’s dynamic—alternately playful, skeptical, and thought-provoking—gives listeners both the macro tech context and the human-level color behind the headlines.

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Takeaways

• Meta Glasses: New styles may finally break into wider (and notably, female) adoption, though daily use still lags. Hardware is improving, but a real breakout moment for wearables may still be coming.
• Prediction Markets: Real money is essential; category still faces ethical and gender engagement challenges. The Polymarket scandal shows young companies’ growing pains.
• Open Source AI: Chinese GLM 5.2 could democratize access and undermine closed labs, disrupting the economics of AI.
• Tech Talent Wars: Market panics over staff moves are more about existential investor uncertainty than real long-term impact.
• IPO Structures: Earlier public offerings facilitate broader wealth-building, but bring regulatory and risk dilemmas akin to prediction markets.
• Tech Messaging: Big companies try to defuse AI fears with “pro-creativity” slogans, but skepticism remains high amid the festival/boondoggle circuit.

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For full episode insights and more, listen to the latest More or Less podcast.

Transcript

[Sam Altman]

This happened at Facebook. Like, there's so many people on Facebook right in the early days who like, were very, very junior engineers and got hilariously uber wealthy in like the first three years of their career purely because they literally couldn't sell and it appreciated so quick. That would have never happened in the public market.

[Brit Morin]

Zuck is a guy that can carry a grudge. And I think Zuck is still savage about when he wanted to buy Snap and it didn't work out, so they copied everything and he's just like putting the nail in the coffin to me.

[Sam Altman]

Trading cards are infinitely dumber, right, Than prediction markets. I would rather our son be addicted to prediction markets than to stupid unboxing trading cards.

[Brit Morin]

Here's where Dave used them. We went to the Vatican. We're like showing our kids the Vatican. Obviously very like historical place. They're like, no photos. Sistine Chapel. Who puts on the Meta glasses right away?

[Jess Morin]

More or less.

[Brit Morin]

Is it no or is it yes?

[Jess Morin]

We'll debate the text. That's best when we get more or less daving grip.

[Brit Morin]

Plus put it all right to the test.

[Jess Morin]

More or less. Why? Hello friends. Welcome to More or Less in Morin's. We're so happy to have you back. Welcome to the.

[Brit Morin]

Glad to be back. I did listen last week. I thought you guys had a good convo.

[Sam Altman]

Yeah, we got a lot, a lot of people, a lot of comments, a lot of. Lot of listens to just the lessons.

[Brit Morin]

Guys, guess what happened? We were in the Zurich airport in an underground train. Lumi, our three year old, needed a place to sit down because her legs were tired. Some woman moved over. Then that woman's husband looked at us and goes, wait, I know you guys.

[Dave Morin]

David, I watch your podcast.

[Brit Morin]

I watch your podcast. Guys, look how famous we are.

[Sam Altman]

Isn't that exciting? The niche? I got recognized on an airplane the other day and it is really funny because it is like, talk about being niche famous. It's like, it turns out no one knows who we are except for the six routes we travel.

[Brit Morin]

Hey, Zurich was weird. I would say Zurich was an outlier.

[Dave Morin]

My grandfather is proud of me for the Zurich one.

[Jess Morin]

The only time that I have a minor fan posse is a Silicon Valley developer conference. I was very popular at Nvidia gtc. I couldn't even buy myself a coffee. But that was it.

[Brit Morin]

So that's okay.

[Dave Morin]

We'll take it where we can get it.

[Sam Altman]

This is the future. It's all about having your community, which is very small, but which you are relevant.

[Dave Morin]

It's pretty amazing. Like this guy who we met on the Zurich airport, we ended up getting some really cool stuff done for OpenClaw within, like, 48 hours. And so I am very grateful for it.

[Brit Morin]

He gave Dave a hot tip, and then they vibe coded that up real fast.

[Sam Altman]

Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel type stuff. What are we doing here?

[Brit Morin]

Can't tell you the secrets.

[Dave Morin]

I'll tell you offline, Sam.

[Jess Morin]

Whatever is smaller than a Pico influencer. That's what we are. What's smaller than a Pico influencer?

[Dave Morin]

Nano.

[Jess Morin]

Nano.

[Brit Morin]

Nano.

[Jess Morin]

I thought it goes nano.

[Brit Morin]

Micro.

[Jess Morin]

Oh, micro.

[Dave Morin]

Quantum.

[Jess Morin]

See, I'm not even smart enough to figure that. Guys, it's been another exciting week in technology. Here are some of the things that have happened.

[Sam Altman]

Has it?

[Jess Morin]

Sam says no. I try to bring the hype, but you guys can tear it down.

[Dave Morin]

It's good.

[Jess Morin]

We had Cannes Lions.

[Sam Altman]

That is not a thing.

[Dave Morin]

Not to be confused with Festival de Cans. Right? Right.

[Jess Morin]

Okay. But actually, I have a profound tech one takeaway from that that I'm willing to share with people. We have 20 million new styles of Meta Glasses backed by Kendall.

[Dave Morin]

They're cool. I like them.

[Jess Morin]

I actually like the look, too.

[Brit Morin]

Guys, you guys can't talk about the news.

[Jess Morin]

We're not talking about the news.

[Dave Morin]

We've always been Meta Glasses fanboys. Well, we're.

[Brit Morin]

This is the agenda section.

[Jess Morin]

Okay? We've got Meta Glasses, we have Ken. We have Hot AI recruiting Poaching Summer part two. You. You may remember last summer.

[Dave Morin]

Oh, God.

[Jess Morin]

When Meta raided OpenAI. Well, the sequel is back. And Anthropic is raiding Google. Dun, dun, dun. We should talk about that. Or talk about why it doesn't matter, but the markets seem to think it matters. Dave has some thoughts about IPOs. I love when one of you tweets. It gives me so much fodder. SpaceX is also tanking.

[Sam Altman]

Tanking.

[Jess Morin]

And, Brit, there's something happening with the App Store that you wanted to talk about in Europe.

[Brit Morin]

Yeah, that sounds good. And Meta is launching, like, a poly market competitor. We should talk about that, too.

[Dave Morin]

Oh, God.

[Sam Altman]

But for, like, virtual currency. No, real money.

[Jess Morin]

I know. I knew. Sam, I wanted to ask you your opinion because I want to do this for the information, but I get stuck on the virtual currency part because I don't think anyone would care.

[Sam Altman]

No. Well, we've talked about this, like, six times, and it has to be real money. It's not a thing if it's not real money.

[Jess Morin]

I know. Well, also, guys, I love the headline for that article broken by the New York Times. Was CEO directs company to look at. I was like, I just thought that was very funny.

[Dave Morin]

Isn't that what CEOs do in an

[Sam Altman]

era of Subaru shares? Everything is CEO directs company to do thing.

[Dave Morin]

It's more like CEO directs company to do thing. Company doesn't do thing.

[Sam Altman]

Well, it's like, it's like the headline should be in Shocking twisted events. A non CEO directed a company something.

[Jess Morin]

No, that doesn't happen at that company or any other company. Okay, let's start with the glasses. So we had the Snap came out with its latest spectacle thing. Meta. Basically when independent dropped the Ray Ban relationship.

[Dave Morin]

That's not true.

[Sam Altman]

What did it do to Ray Ban stock?

[Dave Morin]

That's not true. It's all Luxottica. Right? Luxottica owns Ray Ban. They just made their own label. Right? So it's, it's all the same. Same. It's just that they've got their own label now, but they're manufacturing it in the exact same factories.

[Jess Morin]

Okay, fine. They've got their own label.

[Sam Altman]

Every glass is manufactured in the same factory for some reason. There's only two things you can't manufacture it in one factory. One is the most high end chips in the world and the other is sunglasses.

[Dave Morin]

Interesting.

[Brit Morin]

Well, I like them. I'm going to buy them.

[Jess Morin]

Okay, so we like these new styles. Do we think it will matter? Brit, Is this going to become a new category? Is this the breakout moment for wearable glasses?

[Dave Morin]

Isn't it already?

[Brit Morin]

The thing I think is hilarious is that last week Evan Snap. Evan from Snap launched. What's that glove? What are those glasses called?

[Jess Morin]

Spectacles.

[Sam Altman]

The $2,000 ridiculous looking. Miranda Kerr is attractive.

[Brit Morin]

She's attractive in anything though. She could wear a paper bag on her head and she'd be attractive.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, it's true, guys.

[Jess Morin]

Kylie Jenner is. I mean Kendall Jenner is also attractive. Is it Kendall? It's Kendall.

[Dave Morin]

It's true.

[Brit Morin]

But the Snap glasses. No, this is not going to happen. Hilariously, I would bet you Zuck like pushed the timeline up to get this announcement live within a week.

[Dave Morin]

Doesn't care.

[Jess Morin]

No, he's been making this push for a while.

[Sam Altman]

Guys, Snap is a $7 billion company. Is completely irrelevant. What Snap does, it's like, it's like

[Jess Morin]

a pre series A AI startup.

[Brit Morin]

Zuck is a guy that can carry a grudge and I think he is still. I think Zuck is still savage about when he wanted to buy Snap and it didn't work out. So they copied everything and he's just like dig, he Just putting the nail in the coffin.

[Dave Morin]

No, this is some conspiracy shit.

[Brit Morin]

I love conspiracies.

[Jess Morin]

Dave, trace the launch of these glasses to Mark going to the Prada sh. Show. This has been a long, simmering fashion thing.

[Brit Morin]

I'm not saying they weren't in the pipeline. I just think he might have. He might have, like, buffered the marketing announcement a little bit.

[Dave Morin]

No, no.

[Sam Altman]

They did that with threads, maybe, but like, with this. Keep in mind the fact that Snap is now about two box dot nets. That's how important and big a company it is, right? Like it's about2box.net. We love Aaron. We don't understand that company. We love Aaron.

[Dave Morin]

I hung out with Aaron the whole Apple event.

[Sam Altman]

To be clear, I adore Aaron. I don't understand the company.

[Jess Morin]

We all love Aaron. Aaron, we need you back on the pod.

[Sam Altman]

There's a difference between loving the person and the company. So it's a two Box.net company.

[Dave Morin]

You guys stay focused on the glasses. Come on, two.

[Sam Altman]

Well, for Box.net glasses.

[Dave Morin]

But the second you can talk to your files in your head, it's like, good news.

[Sam Altman]

You can see files in your glasses. All of the files. And second, like, in terms of these, I do have to give. I give credit. I don't know Evan at all. I think I've met him once in passing.

[Jess Morin]

I actually like Evan.

[Sam Altman]

The thing. The only thing I know about Evan, which I do quite appreciate, I think is hilarious, is that on LinkedIn, his profile says something to the effect of, like, head of products for Meta. Which is awesome because.

[Brit Morin]

See, I told you. There's still a grudge, you guys.

[Jess Morin]

So this. Did we decide if this was the watershed breakout moment for this category of wearable, or have we. Is that. Jury's out.

[Dave Morin]

No, Jess, it's just the evolution.

[Brit Morin]

Okay, okay, Dave, it's not the evolution. You know why? Because from day one.

[Dave Morin]

Brett, you're when.

[Brit Morin]

Shh. Stop interrupting. From day one.

[Jess Morin]

Dave, stop the head shaking and let the woman speak.

[Sam Altman]

This is like Austin Powers.

[Brit Morin]

Yeah, our editors are. Or else the editors are going to cut this out. Okay? I said from day one, when Meta launched the first Ray Bans. Women are not going to wear these things. They, like some women wore them fine. They are not attractive for women. They never have been. The Oakley one sucked. Finally, this is the watershed moment of women buying smart glasses. Mark my words. Saying it now. That's all. So, yes, I do think it was a big deal. Okay?

[Jess Morin]

Britt says it's a big deal. I think it's a slow Evolution. I think it's slow evolution.

[Sam Altman]

Look, I love the smart glasses. I have probably 10 pairs of them. I think they're great. I've had them for every generation. I used to have the original ones.

[Jess Morin]

How many times a year do you wear them, Sam? How many times a year?

[Sam Altman]

That's the thing is I love them and they're really cool for action shots. I do use them occasionally, but my hours of use per pair is quite low. Right. Still. Right is my problem. Like, I love the idea of them. They have great audio. I love popping them in Miata.

[Dave Morin]

Like, they're very fun. They're a very specific, very specific use case.

[Sam Altman]

They're fun for photos. But it's like I. They have not yet made it, despite my ownership of so many pairs of them into like my daily rotation in any form.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, it's a good point. I use them on.

[Brit Morin]

Dave wore them all last week on travel, on our travels.

[Dave Morin]

No, I didn't use them all last week. I brought them along and I had them in my. You know, I love photography.

[Brit Morin]

Here's where Dave used them. We went to the Vatican. We're like showing our kids the Vatican, obviously. Very like, historical place. They're like, no photos. Sistine Chapel. Who puts on the meta glasses right away?

[Sam Altman]

I tried to do that at the, at the Toronto Space Needle where they're like, you can't have anything but. Except for your glasses. So I put on my glasses, like, great, I'm gonna get my own footage. I don't wanna pay you $40 for your pre recorded role of me on the Space Needle. And they're like, no smart glasses. I'm like, what if these are my prescription glasses? You can't tell me not to wear smart glasses. So I had a fight with Canadians about the same thing.

[Dave Morin]

Well, it's interesting. Like I use them throughout the trip here and there. And even if you're doing that and you. If you have your smartphone and then I have. I carry another camera with me, usually, like, the quality isn't there yet to exceed the smartphone quality.

[Sam Altman]

Pretty good.

[Dave Morin]

It is pretty good.

[Jess Morin]

This sounds great.

[Dave Morin]

The quality is like still right below smartphone quality. And so when I look at my photo library in context, I'm less psyched about the photos from the Meta glasses than I am about.

[Sam Altman]

But Dave, what you have to do is include at least one photo from the glasses in your Instagram carousel so you get boosted distribution.

[Dave Morin]

Oh, yes, indeed. Look, the videos are definitely breakthrough in terms of video. It's certainly a breakthrough.

[Sam Altman]

So my big news of the week which is relevant to this is I unfortunately dropped my phone off a mountain and I lost the greatest video I've ever taken in my entire life.

[Dave Morin]

Oh, man.

[Sam Altman]

But it's funny because you're like, I should have been wearing my glasses, which case I wouldn't have dropped my camera, I mean, my phone, off the side of the mountain.

[Brit Morin]

And.

[Sam Altman]

And actually, it would have been amazing for climbing the middle of Teton. But for whatever reason, despite owning several pairs and having them in my house, I didn't bring them. So, like, there's some gap still to cross there, if that makes sense, you know, for sure.

[Dave Morin]

I was in the middle of the Roman forum and had them. I had them on.

[Jess Morin]

You guys are just like pissing in each other's. Where I was last week. Sorry, it's just like I was at the forum. I was on the middle Teton. I was, you know.

[Dave Morin]

Okay, let us do our man thing.

[Jess Morin]

Just keep going. Tell us when you're done.

[Sam Altman]

Yeah, listen, we're early stage VCs for a reason, Jess, which is we get to do these things. We don't have real jobs.

[Dave Morin]

You know, it's to the same point, Sam, I realized at I was like, oh, yeah, I can ask it what I'm looking at and have it tell me the story.

[Sam Altman]

And it's gonna be like the Sistine Chapel, you idiot.

[Dave Morin]

I will say it's a pretty good use case, though. You can say like, hey, Meta, tell me what I'm looking at.

[Brit Morin]

He was doing that a lot in Italy.

[Dave Morin]

I learned a bunch of things about Roam that I didn't know. And that use case was pretty great,

[Sam Altman]

some of which may even be true.

[Brit Morin]

Wait, does Meta's click tracking apply to the glasses? Are they like.

[Dave Morin]

Of course they are. What are you talking about doing?

[Brit Morin]

Getting training data off of everything. And by the way, is this what's going to start happening? Because I've started getting started startup pitches about this where, you know, everyone's wearing voice recorders now. So the thesis is like, are all

[Sam Altman]

hustle everyone meaning you?

[Brit Morin]

Well, no, some people in Silicon Valley. So the thesis is like, they need more training data of like real world world people are like construction workers and like Disney, like ride staff gonna start recording everything.

[Dave Morin]

Sam knows all about this. I know of a deal he's working on in this zone.

[Sam Altman]

It's done.

[Jess Morin]

Oh, now we're disrooting each other's deals. I love this. Okay, so we've decided the hardware is making progress. The sort of software and use cases. Don't you have to be at the toothbrush test. To be a consumer product, you have to be used twice a day.

[Sam Altman]

You use your toothbrush twice a day.

[Brit Morin]

That's like a very old. I forgot about that analogy.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, it's like coffee and toothbrushes.

[Jess Morin]

I just teed that up for you. I don't know. I'm optimistic. I also really like. I really like the sporting use cases of these things. I think they're fun to play. Play tennis with and all that kind of stuff. So we're pro. We're pro.

[Sam Altman]

It's great. It's great. It looks great. Ski racing, there's. We're pro. It's just like there's something still to cross.

[Dave Morin]

How about this? Credit where credit's due. It is a great product and I like it when meta gets out of its own way and doubles down on products that it has that are already great. And so I kind of give them props for doing that on this. Like, it's a great product. Just do it, you know?

[Jess Morin]

Okay. Dave, how would you feel about a meta prediction market? Because that will seg us.

[Dave Morin]

Don't care. Doesn't matter.

[Jess Morin]

Don't care.

[Sam Altman]

Yeah, like, doesn't matter if it's not real money.

[Jess Morin]

I think you have all these companies unleashing vibe coding within their companies, which means you're going to have like a lot of side projects and interesting things.

[Sam Altman]

This predates vibe coding.

[Jess Morin]

Okay, Well, I don't know. I mean, it's fine. I'm actually not that interested in it either, but I think you're gonna. There'll be a lot of random apps from a lot of random companies.

[Dave Morin]

I'm just not interested in the category in general. Like it's doing.

[Jess Morin]

Oh, say more.

[Dave Morin]

It's just doing quite a bit of damage to kids in their 20s. Like they're very addicted. They're very addicted to sports gambling.

[Sam Altman]

Okay, Everything's bad because.

[Jess Morin]

Wait, but Dave, so are you talking about just prediction markets or are you

[Dave Morin]

talking about prediction markets?

[Jess Morin]

Prediction and sports gambling.

[Brit Morin]

Because, well, they're losing a lot of money.

[Dave Morin]

Oh, yes. We're not calling it gambling. Sorry.

[Jess Morin]

They're bigger sports betting platforms than the prediction markets from my understanding.

[Brit Morin]

Not that I've taken off with 20 year olds, though.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, not like ki.

[Sam Altman]

Listen, guys, I'll take the other side of this for once.

[Dave Morin]

I'll be the.

[Sam Altman]

I'll be the. More on this. Look, I actually absolutely love this category and I think it does make sense in the very abstract for meta be doing it. Why? Because my favorite person to read in College was Hayek. Markets are information machines, right? And especially as the world gets harder to predict, blah, blah.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can talk Austrian economics all day.

[Sam Altman]

I love this stuff and I think it makes a total sense abstractly. Right. And like I'm actually like quite. I mean if there are companies I would want to go run, this is like very high on the list of things I think matter and are interesting.

[Brit Morin]

Ooh, that's a big one.

[Sam Altman]

No, it's super important to get right. Like this is like one of the key machines that we need for like the Internet to be. The Internet is like we need pricing mechanisms and machines that tell us what, what's real. So like I'm fully on board with this being awesome and more distribution.

[Jess Morin]

The problem is they don't always tell us what's real. Sometimes they tell us what people think you want to be real.

[Sam Altman]

Well, no, they tell. Well, this is the same thing, the stock market. The stock market reflects not reality. The stock market reflects number what number go up and number go down. And like there's this whole second order game to the whole thing. But like there's a lot of problems

[Dave Morin]

but these fundamentals, if that's already the truth of reality right now, Sam, then why wouldn't it just apply to this? You launch another one of these markets, you end up with number go up, number go down, crypto behavior all over again.

[Sam Altman]

No, no, no, I, I get it. The reason, the reason it is intellectually interesting for meta, of course, right, Is because you have a bunch of normies who are like actually do have information about the world, right, from their personal lived experiences. And if you can get them engaged in the, in a market on that you can learn about the real world. And like that's actually like using the humans to pump all the knowledge was like one of the most interesting things possible about a social network. Now how it actually plays out and the less intellectual side is all, it's

[Dave Morin]

just never happened that way we can go back through like the history of social networking launches, not just Meta, but across all of them and it just never plays out that way.

[Sam Altman]

I agree that it's extremely unlikely that a enormous company platform will successfully launch something as avant garde as a. It's not impossible, but very unlikely.

[Dave Morin]

I don't know, it might be good, but I actually, I worry that it will be too good.

[Sam Altman]

Oh, but I want say more, Dave.

[Dave Morin]

That's what I mean. Like, you know when you talk to parents, like I've got a lot of friends around town that have kids in their 20s, and they are having, like, serious problems with sports prediction markets, and they can't stop. They are spending way too much money. These things are really good at addicting you to getting, you know, money out of you while watching a sports game. And I actually worry that Meta will be insanely good at this, actually, and that's the problem.

[Sam Altman]

Would you rather your kids be addicted to this or Pokemon?

[Dave Morin]

Pokemon, probably.

[Sam Altman]

I don't know. Like, our oldest son has discovered trading, like.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah. What do you mean by Pokemon? Like, the.

[Sam Altman]

Like the trading cards. Like, our son has discovered. Our oldest son has discovered trading cards. And it's the most annoying thing in the world to me because it's, like, so stupid.

[Jess Morin]

You have to go to a physical store.

[Brit Morin]

They grow out of it. This is the year that that happened.

[Dave Morin]

But you don't actually. Jesse, there's like, these entire apps now that are about trading cards and, like.

[Jess Morin]

Yeah, I know, I know.

[Sam Altman]

To me, trading cards are infinitely dumber, right. Than prediction markets. I would rather our son be addicted to prediction markets than to stupid, unboxing trading cards. Because at least there's some, like, risk, reward, learning markets.

[Dave Morin]

It's interesting how hard it is to process that.

[Jess Morin]

It's like, what if he's, like, addicted to, like, playing with his friends outside and doing his homework and playing. Playing tennis? Like, I don't know. This is like an old dream.

[Sam Altman]

I'm just saying, like, I don't like. To me, like, in the spectrum of Dumbass for teens to do, I would rather them be learning about, like, bet sizing, risk, reward, like, you know, stochastic markets than, like, watching idiots unbox Pokemon cards for the dopamine hit of getting some stupid jersey cards.

[Dave Morin]

Sure.

[Jess Morin]

But the unboxing videos, I hate. I just hate.

[Dave Morin]

It's a huge thing. Not just the unboxing, but I think they call it ripping. It's like you rip open the trading card pack and there's like, an entire market around this. I'm. I'm not into it, but all the guys I know that coach baseball teams around the Bay Area, they're like, super into this, and it's become, like, a major category.

[Jess Morin]

Okay, Brit, do you have prediction market thoughts? And then I have one.

[Brit Morin]

The one thing I wanted to say back to the voice of the female user and consumer. Women are only, like, less than a quarter of Kalshee and Polymarket right now. Really hasn't, like, struck with most of the women I know. I actually think it's going to hit on with Meta if they do this and they build it into things like Instagram because I think these things are

[Dave Morin]

already at large scale. Why would the behavior change?

[Sam Altman]

It has to be like betting on Love Island.

[Brit Morin]

Exactly. Like the Bachelor and people are going to be like, oh, I bet it's going to be Jake, not Chris. No, it is. And the women are going to like get really vicious with each other about which guy is going to be the winner or what Taylor Swift's going to wear to her wedding. And I think it's going to become tribal and like really community oriented and women are going to get really into it.

[Dave Morin]

I was looking at the numbers on X and it's like, you know, X is actually like 85% men.

[Sam Altman]

I could have told you that.

[Dave Morin]

Instagram's the opposite. You know, it's like all women. So like really what Meta has to do to make this successful is make it successful on Instagram and then it will crush.

[Brit Morin]

That's what's going to happen.

[Jess Morin]

I like that angle. So I like Brit's angle. I have another angle. Intellectually, polymarket and Kalshi are like really interesting businesses for all the reasons Sam talked about in markets and truth. And as a journalist, like there's, you sort of have a complicated relationship with them but like there is a wisdom of crowds undeniable like truth democratizing information element that is very compelling. The problem is these companies are not acting particularly responsibly, especially Polymarket, which I think, you know, is actually kind of a shame because it's allowing especially the media narrative around them, like they're dropping like low hanging fruit for the media to rightfully criticize and attack them, which is actually obscuring some of these more bigger issues. So the latest one is like polymarket's influencer program, which you can agree or disagree that influencer programs are good or bad. You should say they should be labeled. But Polymarket has been directing influencers to make fake videos about fake trades and reporting fake earnings for their influencer program. I think that's just like immature behavior. Honestly, I don't know. I'm not saying it's illegal, I'm just saying but like if you're in a business like this that is so potentially interesting yet disruptive and you're going to go and like rattle some cages. Okay, but rattle the right cages. Like just don't do stuff like that. That honestly reporters who, some of whom like aren't going to take the time to understand like the intricacies of the platform, which is actually quite interesting. Like actually there are many things about the platform that are transparent and that you can see all the transactions, which is unlike sports betting. Like, all of those things just are going to get drowned out by, like, paying influencers to make fake videos, reporting fake earnings, and then, like, denying it and being nasty about it. So that is my current take on the prediction markets. They're not going away. And then I think things like. I think it's going to be hard for anyone to compete with them if they're based off, like, a fake currency.

[Dave Morin]

For sure.

[Sam Altman]

No one cares about a fake currency.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, no question.

[Sam Altman]

Fake currency is dumb.

[Jess Morin]

Awesome. Okay, we got that topic. Let's talk. Will you guys indulge me on the talent wars? I feel like no one's interested in this, but the markets are.

[Dave Morin]

It's just boring.

[Brit Morin]

It's like ping pong.

[Jess Morin]

You know why I think it's not boring? This is why I think it's not boring.

[Dave Morin]

It's like people want money. AGI is not happening at any of these places. It's all like a big.

[Jess Morin]

But that's what's interesting about it.

[Dave Morin]

People are willing to do anything to make money.

[Jess Morin]

I think if you look at the layer of, like, who goes where? It's sort of profoundly uninteresting at this moment. And if you actually look like some of the people who went to meta from OpenAI have gone back. Like, you know, people who were at thinking machines who went back to OpenAI are going back to thinking machines. What's interesting to me is, like, what investors and journalists are like, putting into it. And it makes me realize everyone is, like, deeply insecure about the future of all of these companies that they're hanging so much on these signals that are objectively determined by, like, so many other factors. So to me, it's actually a comment of like, the kind of no one knows how to model out the future of all of this stuff.

[Dave Morin]

So you're saying that's why they're switching?

[Jess Morin]

No, no. This is why everyone's hanging so much on this. Like, why the entire, you know, Google stock is sliding X percent on the news. Like, investors don't know. Like, they're looking for like, any signal or like any alpha, but they're picking the wrong.

[Sam Altman]

Well, that's the problem when your modeling is infinity or zero.

[Dave Morin]

Interesting.

[Sam Altman]

I think you're right. But let me try to, like, build on that. I think. Here's the simple thing. Everyone's model looks like this. Infinity or zero and probability of infinity, right?

[Jess Morin]

Yeah, exactly. That's it.

[Sam Altman]

There's no more modeling than that. And everything Is this risk adjusted? Is this going to be infinity or not? And so as a result, because there's no actual year over year growth, there's no model.

[Dave Morin]

Right.

[Sam Altman]

Then you take any incremental signal and especially because everyone else is going to trade on it, so you have to trade on it faster. And it just like cycles into being a much bigger thing than it should be. Right. Because the models are so. I mean I've. We've all made these models when we were 22. Right. When working for other people is like, you know what it's supposed to look like and then you know what it looks like now. And like that's why it's happening because there is no. Oh, this was growing at 32% and now it's going to grow at 38% compounded 5 year CAGR. It's just infinity, zero probability of infinity.

[Dave Morin]

I would add to that. Maybe one more thing to add is that the level of commitment people have made to investing into these things is extraordinary. Like the amount of risk.

[Jess Morin]

Yeah. The stakes are high.

[Dave Morin]

The amount of risk that is actually into all of these positions is really big. And so I think you've also got that anxiety out there in the market because people don't know whether or not like the example I'll give is yesterday I've been testing this eight Nvidia B2 hundreds. Like basically stock eight of these things running GLM 5.2. And it's like really amazing. This is an open source model.

[Jess Morin]

Dave, give. What is the context of the B? Give us the, the B.

[Sam Altman]

Where did you get eight B2 hundreds?

[Dave Morin]

It's a long story. It's a friend of mine.

[Sam Altman]

That's like the thing I'm interested in is not what you're doing with them. But where, where did you source eight of them?

[Dave Morin]

I can tell you later.

[Brit Morin]

A dark web.

[Sam Altman]

Sam, those are also quite expensive. Are you just like personally paying for those?

[Dave Morin]

We're re right now, but they're, but they're really.

[Sam Altman]

That's a lot. That's expensive, Dave.

[Jess Morin]

And what is special about that B200?

[Dave Morin]

It's the top end GPU that Nvidia makes. Right.

[Sam Altman]

It's the new hotness.

[Jess Morin]

Oh, I see. It's the Blackwell.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, they're The Blackwell. Blackwell 2002.

[Jess Morin]

It's not the Vera Rubin though.

[Dave Morin]

No, the Vera Rubens. You can't get Vera Rubins right now unless you're way out on the frontier.

[Sam Altman]

If it's a porsche, then an H100 is like a Miata.

[Dave Morin]

Okay.

[Jess Morin]

And so Dave, what's your takeaway from this.

[Dave Morin]

GLM 5.2 is A, you know, a new open source open weights model that was released like last week. And I was playing with it in the cloud and was really shocked by its performance. And so I started talking with a couple of these are like hacker friends of mine actually from the 2000s. And we were like, let's see if we can get a rig together and test this. And we got this thing up and running and out of the box it's doing 150 tokens per second, which is like 10 times what you get out of Frontier models. And it's really extraordinary to play with. And this is an open source model. I was testing it, doing the exact same coding tasks that I'm doing with Frontier models. It's like as good or better. And so that's like a really interesting thing that's happening right now. Like I'm sitting here going, I don't need the Frontier models anymore. I can run these open weight models on standard Nvidia hardware, get a bunch of people together, rent one and it works really, really, really well. And this is kind of Sam's point for years that we've just been waiting for this moment to come and I felt like I experienced it yesterday. So like, what does that mean for all of these enormous positions that are out there in these Frontier labs? I think it's kind of shaky.

[Sam Altman]

Yeah, I agree with all that. But I also. Dave, I'm confused as to what heavy lifting you're doing here because I do a lot of freaking coding with these things and like a lot of tasks and like I'm not even close to pushing the limits of what they can do. Like what are you doing in your spare time that's requiring this level of compute?

[Dave Morin]

Because I am pretty heavy user building openclaw.

[Sam Altman]

Yeah, but like what specifically? Like what, like what, like what are you finding you need that level of sophistication for?

[Dave Morin]

Well, this is not about I need it individually. It's that we've got an engineering team that's doing an enormous amount of token spend to do all of the engineering across a month. And so you start to ask this question, like, do you want to pay Frontier prices for these things or do you want to buy the rig yourself and then be able to generate infinity token at 10 times the speed?

[Sam Altman]

I totally understand. I'm actually just asking a more specific report. I gotta say, I'm like a pretty heavy user of this stuff. I build apps all the time, blah blah blah. I am shocked at some people's level of spend on these things, at least what they say they spend. Because I'm literally like, what are you possibly doing?

[Brit Morin]

What are you spending? Sam, what's your monthly bill?

[Sam Altman]

I don't even know, but it's probably a few thousand bucks a month, you know, like, which is a lot by like human standards. But it's not like when people are like, oh, I make, I'm crushing tokens, I'm spending. I'm like, doing what? Like, I've had this thing do entire market analysis back testing on crazy stock theories and it's like 100 bucks. Like, what are we doing?

[Brit Morin]

Think the cron jobs is where they get you?

[Dave Morin]

No, no, no, it's, it's loops. It's these like long running goal loops.

[Jess Morin]

Okay, what's a loop now? Now I get to play the dumb person part.

[Brit Morin]

By the way, I think a lot of people are going to not know how much money they're spending and freak out because once you start getting really into this, like, I have like all these recurring jobs that run all the time and I had no idea that some of them were spending way more than others. And I, I really batched it down yesterday.

[Sam Altman]

I'm not usually someone who's, I'm usually able to figure out how to spend the maximum amount of money. And I've tried and I'm just like, I can't do it. Like, I want to type of venture capital is like, I spent $20,000 yesterday. Like, how, how I'm trying. I'm like, I go to thing like spend up to $11,000 completing this task and comes back, I spent 14.95. I'm like, that's not really.

[Jess Morin]

Dear listeners, please help Sam spend more money. Just tell them how to do it. We're all, be grateful and then we don't have to talk about this. No, just kidding.

[Brit Morin]

Token. Maxine.

[Jess Morin]

Yeah. All I know is that, you know, you go through these eras where there's like the information version of clickbait, like the thing that if you just put in the headline, like you're going to get a huge number of subs. And it's changed over the years. Like it's always something different. Believe it or not, it was Kubernetes at one point. That's how wonky our audience is. Then it was like Softbank and the Vision Fund. And now if you have AI bills in a headline, like, the information community is here for it now.

[Dave Morin]

Interesting.

[Jess Morin]

Being responsible journalists, we do not, you know, therefore, you know, maybe only one Article a week will be on such topics. So maybe we're dumb journalists, but it is amazing how tuned people are. Is this the other thing that does really well is anything to do with data center loans and new structures there? But anyway, that's current window into the psyche of our subscribers. Speaking of which, guys, our new app will be out probably by the time this hits. I hope so anyway. If.

[Brit Morin]

Oh, what are the new features?

[Jess Morin]

I'm glad you asked.

[Brit Morin]

Did you vibe code it?

[Jess Morin]

No. We probably should have.

[Brit Morin]

How much did you pay in tokens?

[Sam Altman]

No, you did Vibe code it. You just Vibe coded it V as someone else who paid Target.

[Jess Morin]

Yeah, I paid someone else to vibe code it.

[Brit Morin]

You double double got double charged tokens and a person.

[Jess Morin]

Britt, let me tell you the two things I love about this app. First of all, video. So we brought TI TV to mobile where it has always belonged. You can see the awesome work of our team. There's a video tab that is a great way to just get. It's basically summarizing all the biggest news. So I love it. And then our Deep Research chatbot is also slightly redesigned and front and center. So I use it all the time to say, what did I miss? What is the biggest thing that was reported this week? I go into a meeting and say, what's the latest we've reported on this or that? And it's unlike ChatGPT or Cloud or Gemini. It's like really smart about tech. So those are the two things. And I'd love feedback on it. What else is happening, guys, do you

[Sam Altman]

actually want feedback on her or do you just want to say, is that just what you say?

[Jess Morin]

I am so feed. No one believes this about me. I, like, kind of went talking to someone. I was like, how do we get more feedback? I would love feedback. Because you know what? I can't use all of our products every second of the day, so I would love feedback. And Sam, you have objectively been testing it for a month and giving me no feedback, so I'm sure it's perfect. I mean, all feedback is helpful.

[Brit Morin]

Jess, do you have your agents giving you feedback every day?

[Jess Morin]

Uh, no, but I've had some great agent use this week. It's been really helpful to me. But, Britt, how does that. What does that look like?

[Brit Morin]

Oh, well, so I. This is part of my recurring loop. I have my agents now when I have an external meeting with like an LP or a founder or something, I get graded on how the meeting went. But for me, for them, the whole meeting, and I think that you should also. And then every time I have new content or something, you can also run it through and get a grade or get like, you know, edits. So I was just curious if you've like run your app through any sort of agent and had them pick apart the pros and cons.

[Jess Morin]

Sometimes it's various points in this I got some screenshots and I, like, would ask Claude if it had a perspective on it. So, like, if, you know, I wasn't sure, like X bio style or Y biline style, but I haven't done it in a super sophisticated way. I have had like meetings that I just felt haven't gone well. And I have, I have proactively asked my agent, like how to improve the meeting or something I could have done better. It always just tells me that, like, you know, there should have been more action. Like, it just should have been more concrete. Every aspect of the meeting, like the beginning of the meeting should have been more concrete with the agenda. The end should have been more concrete with the takeaway.

[Brit Morin]

So we should grade all of our episodes too.

[Sam Altman]

I'm using your app now and I'm actually. You changed my number one piece of feedback I didn't give you, which is that the TRTV shorts. I don't want to watch the whole episodes. The episodes are long and boring. I want the clips.

[Jess Morin]

I made shorts default for you. I made it. No, the shorts is great.

[Sam Altman]

That's the only thing. That was my only feedback. Because the shorts are good.

[Jess Morin]

You will never use Reels or TikTok again. Not quite, but it's really good. And Sam, the next piece of feedback you gave, which I've put to the team, is to sort them based on a recommendation algorithm based on your interests.

[Sam Altman]

So, yeah, I don't want random shit,

[Jess Morin]

but it's not that random.

[Sam Altman]

You know, you should totally do. Why don't you put some ads in this. In the shorts thing? Make a lot of money.

[Jess Morin]

Because we don't have to because we already make so much money off tv.

[Sam Altman]

You can always make more. Why don't you just like every fifth should be an ad. It can be an ad for more or less podcasts.

[Jess Morin]

Okay, you hear that, Lindsay? We got to put some ads. We got to put some ads in.

[Sam Altman]

Lindsay, fire it up. Every fifth scroll can be like, you

[Jess Morin]

know what everyone wants fifth scroll.

[Brit Morin]

Gemini, throw in a more or less ad. Every fifth scroll.

[Sam Altman]

My favorite part of Instagram is the ads. So, like, I like this, but I need ads. I need to buy something.

[Jess Morin]

You need to buy something. This is really good. We're, you know, we have designed a fully designed merch store that I just haven't gotten around to launching. But maybe we should be putting our merch in this.

[Brit Morin]

Is this like a full app review now? Okay.

[Sam Altman]

I also, for what it's like, I like the full flip, vertical script thing. I think you should change the homepage so the articles are also like full screen flippers as opposed to, like, scrolling. Because I don't like. I don't want to scroll anymore. Scrolling's lame.

[Jess Morin]

You can go sideways through the sections. You can. You could scroll horizontally.

[Sam Altman]

No, that's not what I want. I want to like one story, one view, best quote from it. Click on it to see more. Just kind of like, you have the shorts.

[Brit Morin]

He wants an Instagram stories view, not a feed.

[Jess Morin]

He wants to take the writing out of the journalism. I get it, I get it.

[Brit Morin]

But you know what? I would. I would guess the Internet split on that. Feeds versus stories, and people want discretion.

[Jess Morin]

You know, it's an interesting. Do you guys remember, like, Vox launched on, like, it's now a big company that's now a smaller company that's now been split into four companies, but at the time it was cards. You explain the world through like cards. That's sort of what Sam wants. You want the playing card.

[Brit Morin]

A bunch of companies did that. Yeah.

[Jess Morin]

I could vibe code that experience on top of this app and you could pick which one you wanted, right?

[Sam Altman]

No, Never give users choice. You have to tell them what to do. But I do think that way I could just like, flip, flip, flip immediate, giving me accounts of how many stories I haven't flipped through. And I can be done, because I don't. Just don't look at school stories anymore.

[Brit Morin]

Okay.

[Jess Morin]

Cover your ears. All journalists. Now, I do want to make a quick point about can, but, Dave, do you want to make a point about IPOs? Because I've teed it up and I thought you had a good point.

[Dave Morin]

I put out, you know, I put out this tweet a couple days ago because I saw Michael dell posted that 38 years ago today. Dell computer went public. We raised $30 million at an $85 million valuation when they went public.

[Sam Altman]

So like a series seed.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, yeah. And so I said, you know, 80. That's around 200. I'm sorry, 84.5. At a $239 million market cap in today's dollars, if Anthropic had gone public at the same price and grown to its current valuation of 965 billion. A $100 investment would be worth 1.35 million today.

[Sam Altman]

Wow. It sounds like you're a degenerate teen on a gambling app there, Dave, with wanting those types of returns.

[Dave Morin]

It's true, but the question is, and then I just said bring back earlier public listings so that every person can bet on tech too, right?

[Sam Altman]

So you do like prediction markets.

[Dave Morin]

I've made this point a lot of times, pod, but I think that it's interesting the responses that I got. I got a lot of people being like, there's definitely the same amount of growth from here on out for the next 30 years.

[Sam Altman]

And I'm like, people are idiots.

[Dave Morin]

You're going to see like that would imply that we're going to anthropic is going to be worth $11 quadrillion dollars.

[Sam Altman]

Yeah, those are the types of people. But $100 in Space X when it goes public, Those are not real people.

[Dave Morin]

It's shocking to me the sheer amount of them though. Sam.

[Jess Morin]

Speaking of which, that $100. Well, let's see. I don't think that $100 is worth.

[Brit Morin]

It's 96.

[Dave Morin]

It's shocking.

[Sam Altman]

But David, here's the thing. Here's the thing I don't like. I actually, look, it's funny because I'm the one who's pro prediction market and I'm fairly libertarian. I'd be fine if there was no Sarbanes Oxley and you had a much more open public market. I think Sarbanes Oxley is like so stupid and like bad for everyone. But. But here's the flip side is I don't know how you can believe that, but then also be anti prediction market because the whole point of all these regulations and accounting standards and why things aren't public and the cost, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the reasons it's expensive to be public is effectively in theory, if not practice, consumer protection. So you're investing in real companies at real prices. Right. And so it's a really hard one. Right, Because I think I'm more in your camp of like bucket. Like there should be much lighter regulation. Everything is effectively gambling, right? Like, don't worry about accounting standards. Don't worry about what's real and what's not real. Have at it. But I don't think you can simultaneously be against the prediction markets and pro earlier companies going public with lighter standards.

[Dave Morin]

That's interesting. I'm willing to consider that because it's the same thing.

[Sam Altman]

It's the same thing. It's like, here's some made up shit I made up that's worth.

[Dave Morin]

I mean I don't know. It's not exactly the same thing Sam. Right. Like there is a something to going public and committing to report something to the everyman. Right. Like I don't know.

[Sam Altman]

We, we just had a company. I actually am proud of this. So team shares which I seeded originally at an even lower price than Dell

[Dave Morin]

is like love that company.

[Sam Altman]

400k on 4 million posts was my first check into that when they were getting started.

[Dave Morin]

How are they doing in the public market?

[Sam Altman]

They're public and they're up. You know, but like that.

[Brit Morin]

But there's SPACs.

[Sam Altman]

Yeah, they spat.

[Brit Morin]

SPACs are everywhere. I feel like a robotics company to SPAC. There's like SPAC every day.

[Dave Morin]

SPACs have got. SPACs have got a SPAC because it's

[Sam Altman]

so hard and expensive to deal with getting public. Right. And like the, the standards to it as well as just the like where you need to be scale wise the attention is so high. That's why you're seeing the SPACs. That's the closest thing you have to that type of asymmetry. Like team shares being public is obviously much bigger than Dell going public but it's not many orders of magnitude. It's like one order of magnitude more. Not two, not ten.

[Dave Morin]

Right.

[Sam Altman]

And so like that is you say like let things be public earlier. Team shares have just went out and I'm really proud of is a great example of something that goes out at a really low price where there should be 100x ahead of it in theory. Like that's not advice but like it's got the dynamics where it's not quadrillion dollars. Right. If it works. But it's really, really hard for companies to get out that way right now and expensive and you just have to either accept much lower standards and totally change the dynamics and like or. But then you have to accept the fact there's gonna be a lot more fraudulent companies that are public and people are going to lose more money and you know like it even relates to the indices. Right. Which is like to the extent that everyone's gotten into passive investing and like auto clicking on the whole market, well then it really matters what's in the market. Right. Like versus it being individual stock picking. So I don't know. It's a complicated set of issues. It's easy to agree with it intellectually but when you get into the details

[Dave Morin]

it's just a shame. Right?

[Sam Altman]

Well yeah it's also just like the rich got richer.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah. It's just a shame, like the rich got richer.

[Sam Altman]

Like, you don't need a public market when like 1% or even 0.1% of the people have plenty of money to pay for it. Everything.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, it's just, you know, I look at Dell and like a lot of people, like, we all grew up in the era that Dell and Apple and, you know, all of these great companies that are still public today. You know, there was about a 3000x between when Dell went public and today.

[Sam Altman]

But wait, but Dave. But Dell also got taken private and then went public again. And there's a lot of things in the middle.

[Dave Morin]

Dell was very nuanced.

[Sam Altman]

There were drawdowns. I mean, I think I've been. I don't know if this is at all. No, my bet is it's not. I'm very curious how many people actually put $100 into Dell at zero and they couldn't have wrote it all the way through or Apple and still holds it today. Like, no one does that. Right. So it's a very intellectual argument based on like, oh, in theory, if you had done this, whereas in practice. I know one of our neighbors, actually, who's not at all in the tech world is one of these guys who put money in Apple in the 80s and now and kept it and good for him. But I think the very few people that actually do that, that. Right.

[Dave Morin]

But I think that's why the anthropic example is so interesting, because it's happened in under five years.

[Sam Altman]

Like, the anthropic thing is so funny because that's not a natural design pattern. It's also not based on anything other than speculation, really. Right. And like, I think part of the story there is like. Like, here's a funny thing. There's a bunch of people who are going to make a ton of money on anthropic purely because they didn't have the time to sell. Right. This happened a little bit with Facebook, but it's definitely happening with these companies where, like, if you had gone to a rational early employee and it had been public hypothetically, and they went from having $2 million to $20 million, they were like, fuck, yeah, I'm out. Right? To be thrilled. The fact that it grew so quickly is you have this whole class of people that irrationally should never have been concentrated in that asset and never would have been had they had the option and had been public. But because they had no option to sell, and it happened so meteorically fast, there's all these random people that are now going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars by accident. Right?

[Dave Morin]

And like, interesting.

[Sam Altman]

It's like an interesting counter argument to this whole thing, which is like, there's random walk up. This happened at Facebook. Like, there's so many people at Facebook right, in the early days who, like, were very, very junior engineers and got hilariously uber wealthy in like the first three years of their career purely because they literally couldn't sell. And it appreciated so quickly. Right. That would have never happened in the public markets because people have been like, oh, I made 10 times of my money. I can pay off my mortgage and pay for my mom. Fabulous. Right?

[Jess Morin]

Yeah, that's an interesting point, but somewhat niche compared to the bigger point. But I. But interesting.

[Sam Altman]

Well, it's just the point is that, like, whether these things are public or private or you're locked up or you're not locked up, like, there's a whole bunch of random elements to this, you know, and there are trade offs to the whole thing.

[Jess Morin]

Okay, I'm going to end us by. By sending us over to the Riviera where none of us were. Brit, did you ever do Cannes in your media days?

[Brit Morin]

Oh, I've done many can mini cans before. Lots of rose on yachts.

[Sam Altman]

Is it con or can con and

[Brit Morin]

can if you're American and not Cannes, like Dave said at the beginning of

[Jess Morin]

this podcast, it's like, paddle, padel. Paddle padel.

[Sam Altman]

Is it at all relevant anymore?

[Dave Morin]

It was never relevant.

[Sam Altman]

Is this like now the least relevant thing in the world?

[Dave Morin]

Yes, it is.

[Brit Morin]

No, what happened was it used to be legit and then.

[Dave Morin]

No, Brit, it's always been an ad conference.

[Jess Morin]

Well, Dave, ads are legitimate.

[Brit Morin]

Ads are legitimate. It's a big business. It's the business of the Internet, actually.

[Dave Morin]

Yes, but people get very confused. They think it's the Cannes Film Festival, which is actually cool and interesting.

[Brit Morin]

There are two festivals. There's the film festival and the media festival. The media festival is always about advertisers, creative industry, like creative people and media. And then big brands came in. So of course Google and every big tech brand comes in. And then the whole thing does the same as south by Southwest did, which is Jump the Shark. And you have like Pepsi booths and all kinds of things.

[Dave Morin]

Get real. It's an excuse for a boondoggle.

[Brit Morin]

And so people still go. You drink a lot of rose on a lot of yachts. You go to a lot of parties. There's like speaker panels and it's fine. But it's really hot in France right now. It's like 112 degrees and I'm really glad I'm not there.

[Sam Altman]

Here's the thing, like I heard someone was like, the cool event is the UTA beach. And I'm like, I can't think of a company that is less irrelevant than uta. So like what, like what planet are we on? I think and like my experience is a bunch of like people, like the people who go there. Like there's a guy on my team who went and I was like, I'm not paying for that. He's like, it's fine, I'll just go for fun and keep working. He's like, oh, I find a deal. Can I expense part of the deal? Like fine, if you find a deal, which you're not going to find. So like it just seems to me like a bunch of 20 year olds who like are underemployed or can work remote like pretending like they're doing important things when they're not.

[Jess Morin]

We're, we're conflating a lot of things. So Britt's totally right. There's this underlying like creativity like award component that is like totally trumped by the business.

[Dave Morin]

It's a sales conference.

[Brit Morin]

No, it's like the Super Bowl. It's like ads, which has been trumped

[Jess Morin]

by the just boondoggle conference. I am now on record as a fan of the boondoggle known as Davos.

[Sam Altman]

You are what?

[Jess Morin]

Because I did a shit ton of business there this year. So I am like, I was so productive in those three days that I said I helped so many parts of my team by being there for three days.

[Dave Morin]

So I should probably be less cynical.

[Jess Morin]

A boondoggle done well.

[Dave Morin]

It is good to hang out in person and get things done.

[Jess Morin]

It is effective.

[Dave Morin]

Better than zoom.

[Jess Morin]

I will say though my takeaway from I always watch and Brits points out the media, the tech companies have all the money, you know, put up these fancy things and I'm always interested in their messaging and their messaging this year basically boy, boiled down to AI is not evil. Now Google was out there showing the pro creativity side of AI, which I believe in by the way. But their whole thing was like, you know, you can still be creative with AI, it doesn't kill creativity. And then meta, which riffing off the glasses launch, which I don't think was there. Their slogan is the future is for everybody. Which I think is really weird but

[Brit Morin]

is also like including your AI friends.

[Jess Morin]

Right? But also like trying to say you two person who doesn't feel like AI is for you, AI is for you. AKA Don't Regulate Us out of Oblivion. So my take was that the interesting threads to look at were sort of. We've talked about how tech companies could work to change the positioning around AI and this is a small example in the creative guys.

[Sam Altman]

Aiisevil.com is for sale for a hundred thousand dollars.

[Jess Morin]

Oh God. What about aiisgood.com?

[Sam Altman]

well, AI is not evil might be available. We might need that. We can sell it at the Con Festival for millions of dollars to tech join the AI Is Not Evil consortium. I can't believe you're not a member of the AI Is Not Evil consortium.

[Jess Morin]

Oh God. Sam is going to hold people to

[Sam Altman]

the See, I'm going to have Claude make that for me in two seconds and like go pitch it to all the heads of tech companies. They're going to cost like $12, not 10,000.

[Jess Morin]

Good luck with that. And dear listeners, well, I hope you enjoyed having the quad back. I hope that you heard us because these editors are going to have to do some major interrupting cleanup from this episode. But I hope you take that as a sign of how happy we are to be back together talking tech talk and shop. And I maintain it's going to be an exciting summer, so.

[Sam Altman]

And you should enjoy the information's new vertical scrolling newsfeed because I kind of like it. I'm glad you made that change.

[Jess Morin]

And actually I made this is the biggest decision I made was to make shorts the default in the video.

[Sam Altman]

That's a great decision. Good job.

[Jess Morin]

That is really the only consequential thing

[Sam Altman]

I did compared to Instagram. There are far fewer bikinis in this

[Jess Morin]

though, and that is exactly where I sign off, because anything else I say can and will be used against me in all aspects of my life. And so with that, I say thank you, dear listeners, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode of More or Less.

[Brit Morin]

Bye bye.

[Dave Morin]

See you later.

[Brit Morin]

If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for moreorless Avemorin, Essenlesson. And as for me, I'm Brit. See you guys next time.